After the blockbuster film 'Crocodile' Dundee and his own highly publicized grunting up and capture of an errant alligator in an Orlando sewer, John Tanner finds himself a hot property.

''Boss, these people are after me,'' he said, standing among several yard dogs in the sandy driveway of his Christmas farm. ''They're calling every day. We're still in verbal negotiations. I got me a lawyer. Got two of 'em. It's early, but it looks like it's going to happen.''

Orlando attorney Don Wright confirmed that movie production companies are interested in a film on Tanner's life, with Tanner as consultant. He wouldn't give names.

''We've been requested to keep things confidential,'' Wright said, but added that the titles Gator John and Trapper Tanner have been bandied about.

The 'Crocodile' Dundee connection is obvious. That film, about an Australian crocodile poacher who visits New York, has grossed about $173 million in the United States alone. (Tanner hasn't seen it or any other movie in recent years. ''I don't have time. I got too much going on.'')

But had he not trapped an alligator in an Orlando sewer last February, Tanner probably would have remained unknown to movie producers hungry to claim part of the growing reptilian-oriented film market.

The alligator had been spotted in the sewer by city workers. Tanner, an official state trapper under contract to catch nuisance alligators, was summoned by the Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.

Barefoot and alone, he entered the sewer at 3 a.m. on Feb. 26 with a roll of tape and a stick which had a noose-like rope tied onto it. He made his way slowly, cautiously. Somewhere under Parramore Avenue, he found the alligator. It was time for Tanner's special talent -- time to grunt.

''I just held the noose out and grunted,'' he said. ''He'd swim a little bit, then he'd stop. And I'd grunt. He'd swim some more. I'd grunt some more. He swam into the noose and I snatched him. I taped his mouth, and I just laughed all the way out.''

Tanner, after a long, heavy trek back, emerged into daylight carrying the taped-up alligator. The gator, as gators are wont to do, smiled a Mona Lisa smile. Tanner smiled too.

The story got better that afternoon when Longwood radio station WOCL-FM (105.9) saved the alligator's life by raising about $400 to pay Tanner what he would have made after destroying it. (Trappers get no salary, but can sell meat and hides of alligators they are authorized to destroy.)

News bosses everywhere gave the story big play. Tanner (Boone High, '58) was suddenly the subject of world attention.

''Lord, it was terrible,'' he said, producing a thick stack of phone messages from television networks, radio stations, magazines. ''It was newspaper, it was television. It was all kind of interviews. My phone wouldn't quit. . . . It's still going on. London called yesterday. Some kind of radio- talk show.''

Among the early callers were movie producers. Conversations with them have intensified in recent weeks.

Tanner, who dresses in jeans, T-shirts and blue felt slip-ons that he calls ''my Pat Boone shoes,'' looks like someone a California sharpie could victimize. But he considers himself a shrewd businessmen, and he's not so star-struck that he'll sign any old dotted line.

''They think I'm just a dumb old country boy,'' Tanner said. ''Well, my house don't look like much. It's a small, attractive white-frame house. But I own 40 acres. I got a bunch of cattle. I got 5,000 acres leased. I don't owe nobody nothing. . . . And it's not like I want the attention. Everybody likes attention, but too much is aggravating. I'd rather just keep doing what I'm doing and stay relaxed all the time.''

Tanner wants a certain sum of money (he won't say how much) and partial control over the story. He doesn't care which actor plays him, but he does care how the alligators are portrayed.

''John has relayed to me that he's not interested if the alligator is going to be portrayed in a negative, beastly type way,'' Wright said.